Bottling Masculinity: Understanding Men's Scents From Le Male to Axe

When Jean Paul Gaultier launched his Le Male perfume in 1995, the fragrance represented a daring take on masculinity for its time. The male in question is an object of campy eroticism, thanks in large part to its bottle: a headless torso decked in JPG's signature marnière look with ambitious nether regions (no Ken doll groin here, thank you). Its advertising was, appropriately, cartoonishly hypersexual, selling both Le Male's allure to women and a homoerotic sailor fantasy. Does the actual scen...